Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Mariah Pfleger is a marine scientist at Oceana, an international marine conservation non-profit, advising both the responsible fishing and sharks campaigns. She graduated from Florida State University in 2012 where she studied coastal sharks and their relatives. In 2016 she earned her Master’s degree from the University of West Florida where she researched both coastal and deep-water sharks and rays. Mariah worked for 3 years as a field assistant, and during her Master’s an additional 3 years as a field manager, on the Gulf of Mexico Shark Pupping and Nursery Program. She has also conducted research using environmental DNA to detect rare and endangered sturgeon. Her twitter handle is @MariahPfleger.
The demand for shark fins is widely recognized as one of the major contributors to shark mortality around the world. However, solutions to decrease this demand are hotly debated, especially in the scientific community. Southern Fried Science and other websites have published opinions that debate the effectiveness of shark fin bans, but as a shark scientist working to implement this policy I would like to present the case for shark fin trade bans.
The conversation is newly relevant with the introduction of the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act in the Senate on March 30th by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Shelly Moore-Capito (R-WV) and in the House on March 9th by Representatives Ed Royce (R-CA) and Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (I-MP). If passed, the bill would ban the buying and selling of shark fins in the United States – thereby removing the United States from the global shark fin trade altogether. The bill is championed by Oceana, where I work as the scientist on the sharks campaign.
The demand for fins fuels finning – the act of slicing off a shark’s fins and dumping the body back into the ocean. The United States recognized this practice was a problem and implemented the Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000 followed by the Shark Conservation Act (SCA) in 2010, which required that all sharks must be landed with their fins naturally attached (except for smooth dogfish, which can be landed under a fin-to-carcass ratio). However, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the United States is still importing fins from places like Hong Kong, China, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa and Indonesia, to name a few. Not all of these countries have anti-finning laws, which means that the United States may be, and likely is, purchasing fins from finned sharks. Once in the United States market, there is no way to tell whether a fin came from a finned shark or not. By purchasing these fins, the United States is sustaining the demand for this unsustainable practice.
Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
Bringing you the best of marine science and conservation from the last week.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
On January 1, 2016, the Southern Fried Science central server began uploading blog posts apparently circa 2041. Due to a related corruption of the contemporary database, we are, at this time, unable to remove these Field Notes from the Future or prevent the uploading of additional posts. Please enjoy this glimpse into the ocean future while we attempt to rectify the situation.
I’ve been posting very sporadically due to spending the past month or so compiling all the data from the Marine Species Distribution Survey’s Cape Lookout leg. This was an exciting part of the survey for me because it brought me back to the waters I worked in while earning my PhD, so it a lot of ways it was like coming home. I happily took the lead on the apex predator portion of the survey so that’s mostly what I’ll be recapping first, but future posts will have more details on the trap, core, and genetic surveys.
Of course a lot has changed since then. For one thing, the ocean was two meters shallower, though parts of Beaufort and Morehead City used to flood at high tide even back in 2015. The biggest change may be the collapse and migration of many of North Carolina’s barrier islands, especially after Hurricane Monty rolled through ten years ago. In my mind I still picture Cape Lookout, now an island sitting by itself southeast of the Down East Banks, as part of a chain of barrier islands that once outlined all the North Carolina sounds. Core and Shackleford Banks are still on the map, but as shallow subsurface shoals that have a nasty habit of grounding whatever daring (or foolish) freighters still land cargo in Morehead City. They do draw in a lot of fish though, and still act as a sort of sill that allows Back and Core Sounds to function pretty much as shallow lagoons. If rumors of coral growth on some of the banks are true, it’s possible that the shoals could become fixed in place again.
In this book kids learn about sharks and the oceans as they travel with Norman on his adventure through the Bahamas.
Sharks4Kids First Book: Meet Norman the Nurse Shark
Sharks4Kids is an educational non-profit based in Florida that produces curricula and media designed to teach primary-school age kids about sharks and shark conservation. They also conduct Skype-in-lessons, classroom visits, field trips, and shark tagging camps. For their first Kickstarter campaign, they’re producing a book, targeted at elementary-school students.
Sharks matter, according to my co-author who uses the handle WhySharksMatter, and ocean outreach literature targeting younger students is often light on solid educational content. Online media is great, when available, but not everyone has reliable access to the internet. One of the campaign goals is to distribute this book to schools in the Bahamas, which is a major benefit to a region where persistent, high-bandwidth internet is not always a given.
Onward to the Ocean Kickstarter criteria!
1. Is it sound, reasonable, and informed by science? Sharks4Kids has a solid tract record producing entertaining and scientifically literate content that appeals to a younger audience. I have no doubt that Norman the Nurse Shark, though necessarily anthropomorphized, will provide fact-based, pseudoscience-free information about nurse sharks.
Read More “Ocean Kickstarter of the Month: Meet Norman the Nurse Shark” »